Michelle Reid - Italian Deception - The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain

She moved around as if surrounded by a fog, though she didn’t mind. It might be cold but it was oddly comforting—she liked it. The Salvatore family were being kind to her. They had managed to put their resentments aside in these days of a shared grief. Mrs Salvatore invited her to come and stay with her, but Shannon declined. ‘I want to stay with Luca,’ she explained, too lost in her fog to see that the invitation had been issued to get her away from Luca. But it would not have mattered if she had been aware of it because Luca himself happened to overhear the invitation, and turned it down.

The only time the fog cleared was when she was with the baby. In fact her world began to revolve around the tiny and sweet, tragically orphaned daughter of Angelo and Keira.

Having had personal experience, Shannon knew exactly how it felt to be orphaned at birth. She and Keira had been brought up by a spinster aunt who’d come to Dublin and carried the two girls off to live with her in England. Shannon knew all of this because Keira had told her. Only three years older than herself, yet Keira had remembered it all so vividly. Maybe it was Aunt Merrill’s no-nonsense efficiency at that time that had turned the frightened and bewildered Keira, who was missing her mother, into such a timid mouse, whereas Shannon had never known anything else but Aunt Merrill’s no-nonsense, ‘I don’t have time to deal with this’ attitude, so she’d learned to be independent very young.

Aunt Merrill shocked everyone by marrying and moving to live with her new husband in South America only weeks after Keira’s wedding and while Shannon was in her first term at university. It had not occurred to either sister that the woman they’d sort of relied upon had been chafing at the bit waiting for the moment when her responsibility towards them would finish so that she could get on with her own life. Neither of them had resented their aunt for doing that, but with Keira living in Florence and busy building her marriage, Shannon had been left alone to fend for herself while she’d finished her education. What emerged from those years of self-sufficiency was a bright and super-confident young woman brimming with a zest for life.

Her aunt knew what had happened to Keira and Angelo because Shannon had rung her up to break the news. Merrill offered her sympathy but said she would not be able to attend the funerals because she had too many commitments. When Aunt Merrill had fulfilled her commitments to her sister’s children she’d well and truly cut them out of her life.

Looking down at the small baby she held cradled in her arms, ‘It will never be like that between you and me,’ she vowed softly. ‘You, my precious, will have my lifelong love.’

Luca appeared, striding into the nursery like a dynamic force wearing one of the sombre dark suits she’d grown used to seeing him in over the last week. He looked tired, drained to the dregs of his energy by too much heartache and too many painful, emotion-stripping formalities to deal with. But his face softened into a smile when he saw Shannon cradling the small pink bundle in her arms.

‘She’s been unplugged,’ he exclaimed in soft surprise as he came down on his haunches to brush a gentle finger along the baby’s pink cheek.

‘Half an hour ago.’ Shannon smiled too. ‘They just came in and took out the leads and tubes and handed her to me.’

‘May I take her?’ he requested, and without hesitation he received the tiny person into the crook of his arm.

Straightening up, Luca strolled away to the window, his dark head bowed as he gazed down at his brother’s child. She was exquisite. A tiny pink rosebud Angelo would have fallen instantly in love with.

Well, I’ve done it for him, he thought adoringly. Angelo’s daughter was never going to feel the loss of her father’s love, he vowed, and lowered his head to seal the vow with the light brush of his lips to her petal-soft cheek.

‘I must formally register her birth soon,’ he remarked as one thought led him onwards. He’d become quite the expert on the official procedures required for registering birth and death, he mused. ‘This little angel needs a name.’

‘She already has one,’ Shannon said, then flushed when he lifted his eyes to send her a sardonically questioning glance.

‘Well, this is interesting,’ he drawled, and he glanced back at the baby. ‘It seems you have a name no one else knows about, mia dolce piccola . Perhaps your Aunt Shannon would like to share it with us?’

Aunt Shannon suddenly looked distinctly defensive. ‘I call her Rose,’ she murmured. ‘It—it’s Keira’s middle name.’

‘I know it is,’ Luca said quietly. ‘I was merely wondering if there was a second or two when you considered giving all of us an opportunity to offer up our own suggestions …?’

He could see by the frown pulling at her brow that there had not been a second when she had considered such a thing. ‘I haven’t gone over your head and made it official. It’s just my name for her,’ she then said uncomfortably. ‘If you have any objections then just—’

‘I like it,’ he cut in, making that point clear, though his eyes narrowed slightly as a sudden suspicion began to play with his head.

If Shannon had decided on the baby’s name without consulting with anyone else, could it be that she was harbouring ideas of possession that did not include anyone else?

He studied her tired face with its blue eyes set in saddened darkness and the downward turn that had taken virtual permanent control of her beautiful mouth. Her skin looked so delicate it reminded him of finely stretched silk—touch it and it would tear apart.

His gaze drifted lower, moving over the black jeans that made her legs look more slender than ever and the navy-blue top that hid nothing he couldn’t picture for himself. She barely ate and it was showing. She barely slept—though he was aware that she did not know he listened to her as she paced his apartment in the dead of night. She was beautiful but bruised, beautiful but lost in her own world of grief that shut out everyone else.

But he had plans for this baby. He had plans for her aunt. Aware though that this was not the time to voice those plans, he continued amiably, ‘If I could make a small addition—for my mother’s sake, you understand. We could name her Rosita, use Rose as our name for her and add Angelina, in Angelo’s memory—what do you think?’

Shannon thought it sounded so beautifully appropriate that it brought the ready tears to her eyes. ‘Yes, I would like that,’ she whispered and was too lost in thoughts of Angelo and Keira to notice how the baby girl had just become fully Italian.

‘Here …’ Luca said, and gave her back the baby, watched the tears drift away to be replaced with a loving smile and was quietly satisfied with the smooth way he had handled this. ‘Say your farewell, then we must be going …’

They had the ordeal of a double funeral to get through tomorrow and Shannon needed something to wear. She knew this because they had discussed it over breakfast this morning and she had reluctantly agreed to let him take her shopping. But by the scowling expression she sent him he knew she had changed her mind.

‘No way,’ he firmly vetoed the look. ‘You need the break from here and a change of scenery— I need the same. You never know,’ he added lightly as she stood up and without comment went to lay the baby down in her cot. ‘We might even catch ourselves enjoying it.’

Oddly enough they did enjoy themselves. Luca took her back to the apartment for a quick shower before they headed into the city. Shannon changed into the only dress she had brought with her to Florence—a deep sapphire-blue long-sleeved knit thing that clung to her slender figure and highlighted the colour of her eyes. She applied some make-up for the first time in a week, brushed out her hair and decided on impulse to leave it loose. Slipping her feet into a pair of slender-heeled shoes, she then went to look for Luca—and found him in the sitting room stretched out on one of the brown sofas reading a magazine while waiting for her, just as he used to do.